Mount Rennie Rape Case - Public Reaction

Public Reaction

The rape caused a "frenzy" of outrage and sensation in Sydney. The Sydney press focused on the brutal nature of the perpetrators. The Sydney Daily Telegraph newspaper described the crime as one "which no parallel can be found in the crimes of civilized life or in the savageries of barbarism". The Sydney Bulletin newspaper instead argued that Hicks was an "unfortunate", or in other words, a prostitute. It focused on her lack of virginity. Crucially, though, it ignored Hick's claim that she had been raped at the age of fourteen by a married man. Geoffrey Partington notes that the Bulletin likened the incident to British oppression of the Irish. He notes that the Bulletin accused the then Governor of New South Wales, Lord Carrington, as "dragging from the grave the skeletons of the poor wretched ignorant boys whom he sent to the gallows in deference to the laws of a convict colony that has not even yet emerged from beneath the shadow of the gaol wall".

William Hill, Michael Donnellan, Joseph Martin, William Boyce, George Duffy, William Newman, Hugh Miller, George Keegan and Robert Read were tried for the crime. Justice Windeyer declared the crime as a "most atrocious crime, a crime so horrible that every lover of his country must feel that it is a disgrace to our civilization". Nine men were convicted and sentenced to death. Two were acquitted. Sweetman received fourteen years prison with two floggings for his part.